A faraway star
sparkles with the largest amount of zirconium ? the stuff fake diamonds are
made from ? ever seen, according to a new study.

The star has about 10,000
times more zirconium than our sun, in a form never recorded by astronomers
before, researchers said. The strange star also has far more than the usual
amounts of other elements like strontium, germanium and yttrium, they added. [Illustration
of zirconium-rich star]

"The huge excess
of zirconium was a complete surprise," the study's lead author, Naslim
Neelamkodan, from Northern Ireland's Armagh Observatory, said in a statement.
"We had no reason to think this star was more peculiar than any other
faint blue star discovered so far."

The researchers
estimate that the zirconium cloud layer on the star weighs about 4 billion
tons, or 4,000 times the world's annual production of zirconium.

A dying subdwarf

The star, called LS
IV-14 116, is found about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the
border between the constellations Capricornus and Aquarius. It belongs to a
class of stars known as helium-rich hot subdwarf
stars, researchers said.

Using measurements
taken with the Anglo-Australian Telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory in
New South Wales, Australia, the researchers analyzed the light thrown off by LS
IV-14 116.

They found evidence
of various common elements, as expected. But less expected were the strong
signals indicating the presence of zirconium, in an odd form that exists only
at temperatures above 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit (20,000 degrees Celsius).

This type of
zirconium had never been found in an astronomical spectrum, according to
researchers.

And there was a lot
of it. Zirconium abundances on LS IV-14 116 are 10,000 times higher than those
on our sun, researchers said.

A closer look
revealed similarly high levels of strontium, germanium and yttrium, in
abundances 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than expected. [Top 10
Star Mysteries]

The scientists
published their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society.

Stellar zirconium
clouds

The unusually high
concentrations of zirconium and other metals on LS IV-14 116 are likely found
in cloud layers in the
star's atmosphere, researchers said. These clouds are the only
part of a star that can be imaged directly.

The star may have
many different thin cloud layers, each composed of a different metal,
researchers said.

The team also
suggests that the star is shrinking from being a bright cool giant to a faint
hot subdwarf. As the star shrinks, different elements sink down or float up in
the atmosphere to a region where they become highly visible, making the
apparent composition very sensitive to the star's recent history.

"It was very
exciting to discover these completely new chemical signatures in our
data," said study co-author Simon Jeffery, also from Armagh Observatory.
"The peculiar abundances measured in this star, and hopefully in others,
offer a new tool to explore a stage of stellar
evolution, which is extremely difficult to observe
directly."